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@thethingdenounced
Looking for archives of poetry
I am looking for archives of Deaf or Autistic peoples’ poetry. This is for research for my graduate thesis, which is about how we make poetry that resists against audism and ableism! Please let me know if you know where I can find folks, even if it’s someone’s blog. All poets matter in this fight. <3
In the World With You (poem)
I like writing poems to help me work out my emotions, but sometimes they are decent enough that I would like to share them, in case other people feel something similar, so I’ve decided to add poems to my blog and hopefully be more active here than in the past.
CN: This poem is personifying my PTSD, the first part is from my PTSD’s point of view.
In the world with you
In the world with you I watch for danger with you I mind all the gaps in safety in security in...
You see in the world but I feel in the past know the screaming and the texture of...
The things from the world from the past.
I watch I worry I hold the thoughts you try to forget.
In the world with you I work to assess and report...
POW!
For safety! For security! In the world with the past.
In the world with you
In the world with you nagging and on edge
In the world with you screaming in my head
Warnings of threats that don’t appear here.
In the world with the screams and the stares and the textures of...
Please just fuck off.
No amount of self care is going to make me neurotypical
and stop telling me to half smile to feel better about discrimination while you deny me an ASL interpreter despite multiple requests.
Do any other autistic people love staying awake late at night because it’s quiet and you get to be alone?
So much. Also, it’s darker and cooler.
“You need to start trying to speak or you won’t be able to make connections with human beings.”
A doctor told me this last week, and I am still reeling from it because, I mean, first of all, I know TONS of people who have limited or no speech (or choose not to speak because alternative forms of communication fit their brains and bodies better). They are my friends and I love them and they are leaders in my community who I look up to or artists whose work I find inspiring and etc, etc. They are Autistic, Deaf, have Cerebral Palsy and/or a number of other disabilities that for whatever reason affects speech (or makes speech more tiring than an alternative, and therefore less functional for them, where functional is defined as ‘makes the most sense to them’). This doctor denied all of their humanity and I am deeply insulted and shaken. But also. In the month since I have been continuously non speaking (as opposed to usually only being non speaking for random periods of time less than a day long), I have been unemployed and it’s summer so grad school hasn’t started yet. This means my days are 100% structured by me, and what I choose to do. And while I admit I’ve been in and out of the hospital due to one of my disabilities recently (one of these hospitals is where I encountered the above ableist doctor), so I have had periods of time where I am in an environment in which I have very limited freedom, for the most part, I’ve been doing what I want. And more than ever before, I am choosing to socialize with people I don’t know (this is hard for me because I’m Autistic, so new people take extra work to learn to communicate with). And I am making connections with these people. Yesterday, I went to the public library to have my book renewed. While there, I ran into the librarian who runs the weekend writer’s club, and she and I were chatting away. She with her voice, and me by writing out my words on a whiteboard that’s about the size of a sheet of paper. She asked where I’d been last week, told me people missed me, and multiple times told me that she hoped I’d be at the next meeting (I plan to--I missed the last ones for disability reasons, not a lack of desire). Last week, I invited a person I only knew on the internet over to have tea with me. (Yes, that sounds like it COULD be sketchy, but in this case I was quite confident there’d be no problems, which was the case.)
In the hospital (all three times this summer) fellow patients and staff members alike greatly enjoyed my company. We chatted a lot. I tell bad jokes. I have deep and meaningful conversations about some of the biggest problems we face. I teach people things. I tell people they are not broken. I tell doctors I am not broken. I presented on a panel at a conference. These days, I do all this either by writing on a whiteboard or with American Sign Language.
But if I don’t start speaking, I’m not going to make connections with human beings, right? /sarcasm
Ableism in the Workforce
I have a fancy bachelor of science degree from a fancy school, plus a year of graduate work at another fancy school, but I can’t get hired this summer because I am disabled. It’s not that I think these things make me superior, btw (they don’t). It’s just that these things are supposed to make me more hirable. I mentioned that I use crutches in the midst of a VERY promising phone interview, and never got called back. I was offered a job, and accepted it, from a woman who I very much wanted to work with, who had no qualms about my crutches. She asked me to come in the following week for orientation. I did, and suddenly her boss was waving through the conference room glass door for the orientation person to come out. 5 minutes later, the boss entered and told me they were actually just hoping I would fill out papers with my availability, and that hours were not guaranteed. The next day, the woman who had originally hired me called me to tell me there were no hours for me. She was extremely apologetic on the phone. She told me how amazing she thinks I am (because of the research and advocacy work I do, and other elements of my resume, not because of the patronizing “how can you survive this world on crutches” attitude that lots of people take). She tried to refer me to another job, but that one hasn’t called me into an interview yet. Today, I went in for orientation and training for another job I was offered after a webcam interview. Everything seemed to be going great for the first two hours of orientation. When I came back from the lunch break, the boss of the woman who hired me called me in to a conference room. She proceeded to grill me on any accommodations I might need, despite the fact that I insisted I didn’t need any other than, perhaps, knowing this or that easily obtainable piece of information so I can prepare. She seemed to be convinced that I simply didn’t understand the nature of the job, not that I just don’t need accommodations to do it. This went on for a long time. She tried to find all manner of reasons, some of which were random and irrelevant in my opinion (ex - asking me what my future goal was, which is to get a PhD in Education, and she responded that her employees usually go on to get their PhDs in Psychology, when in reality most of her employees do not go on to get PhDs anyways, just based on the fact that very few people go on to get PhDs in general). She told me she will only consider letting me do the job training if (1) I bring her a second doctor’s note stating I can do the job (I already have one, which was required for all employees) and (2) I work with her for awhile so she can figure out what accommodations I might need. Then, she will decide whether or not I can go on to do the training... All of this simply because I use crutches to walk. Nobody cares that in addition to the fact I am a crutch user, I am also a recreational outdoor athlete. Before I went to the orientation & training today, I rode my bike 4.6 miles, which isn’t actually that impressive, but it’s probably more than anyone else in the room did. Last month I went up to the mountains to visit my childhood friend, and we went hiking. This morning I did 6 chin ups after the bike ride (and could have done more if I wasn’t intentionally conserving energy for the rest of the day). I know very few people who can do a full chin up, starting from hands stretched above your head so far you need to go up on your toes a bit to reach the bar (I’m short), to pulling my chin above the bar, in one sweeping motion and without injuring anything. I am strong and fit and passionate, but none of that matters. Why? Because ableism.
You know that type of laughter that starts off as a small chuckle but kinda builds up inside your throat, eventually mounting into a full blown, bent over yourself, holding your stomach as you guffaw uproariously? Yeeeep.
this should be a sculpture about the human condition entitled ‘Unbridled Optimism Meets An Uncaring Universe’
There are photos that tell a story, then there are photos that tell a story.
having just returned from a bike ride like, an hour or so ago, all I can say is this is gonna be the source of my OCD’s intrusive thoughts in the future, I can feel it. lol
whats the difference between bi people and unicorns
i can see unicorns on movies and tv
I told this to my mum and she was like “That’s not t… yes it is.”
Also, unicorns on tv are called unicorns, not ‘horses that don’t like labels’
horses that don’t like labels
it got better.
This unicorn is gonna fight someone
Shun the non-believer!
Best bi post ever.
got the angry ear look right and everything.
So, the club I’m part of at school made this video as part of the Easterseals disability film challenge! It’s a little nerdy, but we felt like that hits the spot.
Let’s talk about Logan
It wasn’t perfect. It was gritty. But it could be a primer on disability rights in modern America.
1. Mutants are disabled (or metaphors for disabled people). Sure, everyone likes to focus on the positive aspects of their differences, but look at the negatives. Neurodivergence combined with disabilities of aging (dementia) and have additional challenges for aging Charles (seizures). Logan’s super-healing might keep him alive through ridiculous circumstances, but he lives with chronic pain, but physical and psychological. As the film so poignantly reminds us, killing, whether you’re killing good guys or bad guys, leaves a mark. And of course, there’s Caliban, whose skin burns in direct sunlight. These three mutants are living together and taking care of one another as best they can on the outskirts of El Paso (on the other side of the border, in Mexico, because the USA’s eugenics history has caught up to the mutants and effectively wiped them out). Charles even says he ran a “special needs” school...which of course is using an ableist euphemism, but also given the conversation he was having in that moment, it is the most fitting language (I am a huge proponent of using the language that you need to in order to reach the specific individuals you are talking to--meaning sometimes it’s necessary to meet someone where they are before going on to explain why where they are is actually problematic).
2. The history of eugenics in the United States of America is a long one that led to the forced sterilization of many people who were considered unfit to breed. A lot of these sterilizations took place in the institutions so celebrated by early 20th century progressives, and continued on into recent memory. Deaf and disabled people were among those who were most targeted for the forced sterilization programs. In Logan, there are references to a similar program (no mutants are born anymore).
3. There is a slight engagement with the conflicts between transhumanists and disabled people. These conflicts (which are not necessarily representative of two distinct sides, but rather are multi-layered and complex) generally revolve around the desire that transhumanists have in “transcending” human bodily limitations (such as by creating technological advances that allow humans to do things with super-human strength) and the desire that disabled people have to gain access to equipment that allows us to be out in the community, working or participating in recreational activities. I highly recommend the documentary film Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement by Regan Brashear if you are interested in exploring these questions. In Logan, the mutants face off not only against a chief of security who has a prosthetic arm and hand that he refers to as an enhancement, but also against an android of some sort or another that is based off the features of mutants, while seemingly without a soul. The creation of this android causes its human creators to seek to exterminate the natural born mutants they had been training. The conflict between transhumanists and disabled people in which transhumanists effectively appropriate our tools for very different uses is a central theme in the film Fixed. It is nice, as a disabled person, to see a film in which people using my community’s tools and bodies without any respect for where those tools and bodies originate are clearly portrayed as the bad guys.
4. With proper support, everyone is valuable. Charles is living with seizures and dementia, both of which due to living into his 90′s (part of the natural course of aging for many). He requires ample support, but with that support, he is still a human being with agency. His agency not only lies in his advice-giving (which in his case is an aspect of his personality, and has been since he was young, rather than a stereotype of old age) and the constant love he provides to those around him (even if sometimes it’s tough love). His agency also lies in some use of his powers. He calms some escaped horses before they get hit by trucks, and tells them to go back to their panicked masters. He tries to freeze the bad guys when they come to steal a young girl from him, and while this doesn’t go exactly how it would have when he was younger because he also has a seizure, if he had simply given up, the girl would have been captured, and he may have been killed. There is also that moment when he explains that experiencing a calm, safe family life for a night was a perfect experience. It is what many disabled people want--but due to the circumstances society tends to put us in, it is not something that we all have access to, and certainly we have less access to it than non-disabled peers.
5. The film is literally about trying to escape a society that wants to kill mutants. Hate crimes against disabled people have experienced a recent increase (I’m sorry I’m not citing my sources, btw, I have a migraine and can barely read right now so I’m writing from memory, so if any readers want to add notes with sources they know, please feel free, or send me a message, etc). Peter Singer, a man who advocates for wiping out genetic disabilities is as popular as ever, and tends to gaslight disabled people who speak out against him. The political situation in this country (USA) is one that is constantly trying to take the needed medical and other supports away from disabled people. We need support to be in our communities. Some of us need supports that can only come from programs like Medicaid. The situation in Logan--in which it is essentially illegal for the mutants to be themselves--is one that the US is very close to becoming. It could easily become that place by 2029. We could easily be in a situation where we disabled adults are living off the grid and trying to sneak disabled kids out of the country. The one thing the film missed, though, is that (at least for now) Canada doesn’t take disabled immigrants...
This was a fantastic movie. There were some problems, of course, as there always are, but some other highlights included the generic farm family trying to protect their way of life (classic American stereotype--if you are from a rural area like I am, you know that when you see that stereotype you immediately like those characters and feel connected to them, even when Hollywood filmmakers get some of the specifics--such as whether boys typically participate in barrel racing and pole bending--wrong). But, likely with full knowledge of this stereotype’s power over the American imaginary, and in response to the surge in vocal/visible racism this country is experiencing, in Logan that family happens to be African American. That kind of subtle social messaging, used in such a positive way, is really great to see in films. And, of course, the entire premise of the film--that it hurts you to kill other people, no matter why you are killing them--is important to our time, and perhaps all of time.
Edit: here is some relevant backup regarding forced sterilization. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=521360544
Destroy the notion that intellectually disabled adults are children in adult bodies.
I don’t care if they only watch Sesame Street because it’s one of a few things on TV that’s cognitively accessible to them. They are not children unless they are actually children.
Too true. Fuck off, infantilization.
Due to some responses I’m getting and seeing about the post I reblogged about the high abortion rates of down syndrome fetuses in Iceland, I want to say:
I fully support parental autonomy; I do not oppose the parent’s right to abortion.
However, I personally find the idea of systematic abortion of Down Syndrome fetuses ableist, and something that flies in the face of what we know in science and psychology. People with Down Syndrome are capable of living full lives. For a whole country to have such high abortion rates specifically of Down Syndrome fetuses shows a massive, troubling lack of understanding either among the population, or among the doctors advising parents at these prenatal screenings.
And if you think that Down Syndrome people shouldn’t exist, please unfollow me, because I do not want to have ableism and negativity associated with me or my blog.
Disabled people, no matter what the disability, are still human, and should not be targeted by eugenics policies.
In support of our current collective uprising, we offer these suggestions for making sure that your actions/ marches/ mobilizations include as many of us as
It’s perfectly okay to enjoy spending time alone. It’s also okay to relax and enjoy a calm, quiet environment where you can do anything you want to without others being around. There is nothing wrong with needing peace and quiet in order to feel better and recharge.
Interviews with Autistics Contact me at pdurbinwestby @ gmail dot com to start an interview discussion. #AutismAcceptanceDay 7 Intern...
Paula Durbin Westby is looking to interview autistics for her International Autism Acceptance Decade project!
This looks cool!
Cripples Enter Back Door Only
I have recently been experiencing a yet-to-be-diagnosed neurological problem leading to a severely ataxic gait, and as such use elbow crutches to walk and avoid stairs because I fall a lot in general, and falling on stairs is potentially extra dangerous. As such, I’ve needed to make use of accessible entrances when I go to the theater or other places (and at school). These entrances tend to be separate from the main entrance, and often require an usher leading me around back through part of the backstage area. This is a subtle form of ableism.
When you don’t design your building (especially buildings that have clearly been recently renovated) to give your audience/customers with disabilities the same experience as other audience members, you are not-so-covertly telling all people with disabilities that we are an afterthought, and not expected to come to your venue.
There is one venue in particular that I frequent that makes me particularly angry, because I cannot make use of the accessible entrance unless there is an usher to escort me. The reason for this is actually reasonable: in order to get between the elevator and the seating area, you pass through a hallway full of dressing rooms. It definitely is inappropriate to let guests unattended into the dressing room area of a theater. That being said, this is terrible (systemically ableist) design because it means that I cannot go to and from my seat when I want/need to. All the other patrons can. If they want to use the restroom or get a snack during intermission, they don’t have to wait and hope that an usher will come find them in the theater and take them up--with that waiting taking up an unfair amount of the limited time patrons have to do those things. Every time I go to this venue (which is frequently because my teachers favor it as places at which we are required to view things for class discussion since it has well-subsidized ticket pricing for students and artists of many different genres and mediums) I get a little more irritated about this separate entrance.
At school this past week, a similar separate entrance was used for me to enter one of the theater spaces on campus to see a show, and I was very irritated (especially because the ushers didn’t have a plan for how to seat me without making me climb up and down several sets of stairs--because I can’t sit at the back of the audience because I am hard of hearing). In the midst of this irritation, I realized that the reason why is because I am not only an afterthought, but I am being divided from the rest of the audience to an extent that my experience is lesser. I don’t get to be a part of the preshow announcement, because I must be seated early, or I don’t have enough time to peruse the program and get myself comfortable in my chair because I am seated late (having waited for an usher to become available to assist me). Whatever displays or other intentional preparation that entering the space through the main doors was supposed to hold for patrons is lost to me.
I have gone back and forth over comparing this with the segregation of Black, Latinx, and other racial minorities of the USA’s sordid past, because the practices of segregation by race were filled with vehement intent, and I think a lot of ableism is due to ignorance. That being said, the very basis of ableism is that disabled bodies are inherently less than non-disabled bodies, and the vast majority of people in the USA seem to subscribe to that in some way or another (including the vicious and common narrative that disabled people are to be pitied, “so we should be nice to them” that steals away the humanity and agency that disabled people have). So, with an assertion that the history of the segregation of people by race is a very different history than that of the history of the segregation of people according to status as having a disability, I’ve decided that the basis of each is a hatred of difference, and each leads to murder and various forms of socioeconomic injustice across society. So this comparison feels right. And it’s pissing me off.
Universal design is justice. Anything else is suspect, and probably ableist.
Hook - an ableist, sexist, fatphobic disappointment.
I just rewatched Hook (the “sequel” to Peter Pan starring Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman) for the first time since I have been an adult. I chose it because I was looking for something cute and funny to relax over. Instead, I became entranced in just how good it was at making the audience feel good about being ableist, sexist, and fatphobic.
First of all, the character Tootles is clearly portrayed as having some kind of disability, possibly mental illness or a developmental/intellectual disability. He runs around saying random cute things, and is used as an object of pity meant to leverage good feelings towards Wendy because she allows him to live with her instead of in an institution. These are two forms of objectification of the disabled body. The former (him seeming to be a cute, harmless disabled person) dehumanizes the disabled person by using them as a kind of sweet pet. We like them not because they are an interesting, fully formed human being that we can relate to on this or that level, but rather because they are a childlike creature who manages to remain whimsical in situations that we wouldn’t (’we’ here is referring to the hypothetical audience member, who is assumed to be non-disabled). The latter dehumanizes disabled people by suggesting our lives are by virtue of our disabilities sad, which removes all of the real agency to make goals and work to achieve them that we actually have in real life (assuming other people and their ableist barriers aren’t stopping us).
Later, it is revealed that Tootles is whatever kind of disabled that he is (the portrayal isn’t representative of any specific disability), because he has left his marbles in Never-Neverland. The character Thud, who I will get to in a moment, claims that the marbles are Tootles’ happy thoughts. This is an egregious statement, because it specifically insinuates that Tootles’ state as a disabled person is in direct relation to an absence of happiness. While many non-disabled people don’t believe that they could ever be happy were they to become disabled, this has more to do with learned ableism than with reality. In fact, disabled people (especially those of us who were born disabled or became disabled very young) typically see their bodies as just...their bodies. Without any specific value judgement. It’s not inherently sad to be disabled.
I have a distant memory that is too distant for me to remember the source, but I have read before an account of the sexism inherent in the portrayal of women in Hook, especially of Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell plays as some kind of fantasy woman: she is singly devoted to Peter, even when Peter is not interested in her, and everything she does is only in relationship to him and wanting him. She is moody and controlling in ways stereotypical to a certain (negative) representation of women that is very popular in films (look at Marion in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example). This stereotype seems to honestly be trying to create a strong woman character, but fails to do so specifically because everything about the character is in relationship to a man, and all the “strength” is portrayed in a nagging way, rather than in the ways that men are portrayed as “strong” in films (which tends to showcase control of other people through a mixture of physical and mental prowess in conducting their primary job, rather than being beholden to another character in some way).
Also there is the tremendously rapey, creepy way that it is discovered Peter decides to leave Never-Neverland as a child. He comes to visit Wendy in London, and discovers her to be a grandmother. Her granddaughter is asleep in the room, and Peter immediately falls in love with her upon seeing her. He approaches her, with some narration mixed in about wanting to be a father, and kisses her--while she is asleep, and has never even met him before. This is definitely not a consensual kiss, and why it is seen as sweet is both tremendously problematic, and reflective of the old-fashioned and disgusting assumption that women exist to serve and please men and bear mens’ children. It is the exact sort of thing that permits to people to think that comments such as Donald Trump’s about randomly kissing women simply because he is attracted to them are okay.
Finally, the character Thud is a character whose personality and interactions with other characters wholly rely on his large stature. His very name is the sound of a heavy object dropping to the floor. He is constantly bullied by everyone, sometimes in underhanded ways that are supposed to look like acceptance and respect (namely, the moment when Robin Williams tells him to protect all the boys who are smaller than he is). When fighting, he rolls up into a ball and knocks down pirates like bowling pins, or steps on planks causing them to lever up and smack pirates. The kid playing Thud is not actually large enough to do the latter (one would likely have to be an actual horse--1500 pounds--to really rip nails up in such a quick-slapping manner), and it’s a form of fat-shaming to illustrate his ‘value’ as a human being having simply to do with the fact that he’s large and therefore provides comedic relief to everyone. His character is just a stereotype that, like Tootles, is meant to be cute, but is simply objectification that gives permission to people to continue to dehumanize bodily difference from what is considered acceptable.
I was very disappointed by this movie, although I realize in retrospect that expecting just representation of anyone other than intelligent, physically strong, white cisgender men from Steven Spielberg is asking for a LOT.
